Best Kind of Broken

58 Levi

It’s been a shitty day. In fact, every day since Pixie basically kicked me out of her life has been shitty. So when I hear the back door of the inn squeak and see Ellen come sauntering over to where I’m replacing a broken shutter on one of the inn’s back windows, I curse under my breath.

“Hey,” she says.

I don’t look at her. “Hey.”

Her focus snaps to something in the distance. “What in the world…?”

I turn around to see two figures, covered in dirt and sweat, staggering toward the inn’s back door—handcuffed to each other.

One is a girl with long, muddy, blonde hair. And the other is…

“Daren?” Ellen takes a step forward as they near.

“Uh, hi.” He smiles sheepishly and starts to wave with his cuffed hand, causing the girl’s wrist to yank up with his.

She whips her arm down and hisses, “Use your other hand, asshole.”

“What the hell…?” I stare, horrified, at Daren and point at his bound prisoner. “Did you kidnap this girl?”

“What?” He makes a face of disgust. “No! Hell, no. You think I wanted to be handcuffed to this girl?”

The girl rolls her eyes. “Oh, like I wanted to be leashed to you?”

“Will someone please explain what’s going on?” Ellen looks around the lavender fields in confusion. “And where you guys came from?”

Daren says, “It’s a long story.”

“It’s a stupid story,” the girl corrects.

Daren glares at her. “Are you incapable of shutting up for even a second?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she snaps back, raising their cuffed wrists. “You’ll have to excuse my bad mood. I have a douche bag attached to me.” She turns to us and holds out her free hand. “I’m Kayla, by the way.”

“Ellen.” Ellen slowly shakes her hand, glancing between the two of them.

Kayla cuts her eyes back to Daren. “See how I used my non-cuffed hand to do that? It’s not rocket science.”

“Yes, well.” Daren smirks. “We’ve already established that you’re an expert on handcuffs.”

Kayla glowers at him. “I hate you.”

“Ditto.” He narrows his eyes at her before turning back to Ellen. “Is Angelo here?”

Ellen hesitates. “Uh, yeah…”

“Excellent. If anyone can get us out of these things, it’ll be him. Come on.” He pulls Kayla by the cuffs to the back door and inside the inn, while she mutters death threats and curse words at him.

For a moment, Ellen and I just stare at the closed back door.

“I don’t like that guy,” I say.

Still looking at the door, Ellen slowly nods. “But I think someone does.” She sounds amused.

I curl my lip. “What, the prisoner girl?”

Ellen gives me an oh please look. “That girl is hardly a prisoner.”

“Whatever.” I shake my head and go back to fixing the shutter.

Ellen watches me.

“So Pixie’s leaving in just a few minutes,” she says, after an awkward amount of time has passed. “She’s driving up to Copper Springs to pick up some stuff from her mom’s before heading back down to Phoenix.”

Where she’ll get on a plane and leave me forever.

“Yeah,” I say. I pull the damaged shutter down and set it against the wall before picking up its replacement. “I know.”

A gust of wind sweeps past, carrying the scent of rain and the promise of another storm. I don’t know why I feel so hollow inside today. I haven’t lost Pixie. We’re still friends.

Positioning the new shutter, I grasp my hammer and begin to nail it into place.

We’re friends.

Ellen eyes me. “Are you going to say good-bye?”

I grab another nail and hammer it in. “Probably not.”

She slowly nods and studies the discarded shutter for a moment. “You know, one of these days I’m going to run out of things that need to be fixed around here and you’re going to be out of a job.”

I stop hammering and look at her. “Is that a threat?”

“No,” she says, something unrecognizable in her eyes. “Just the honest truth.”

With a brief smile, she turns and walks away.